It must be admitted, as heretofore intimated, that this question has not as yet been satisfactorily answered. Whether what is here presented will suffice to settle this point in the minds of students of American paleography is doubtful; nevertheless, it is believed that it will bring us one step nearer the goal for which we are so earnestly striving. Something is said on this subject in my former work,[365-2] which need not be repeated here. As it is evident from the preceding list of characters that conventional signs and symbols, often nothing more than abbreviated pictographs, were used in many cases to designate objects and persons, the inference to be drawn, unless other evidence is adduced, is, that this method prevailed throughout. Nevertheless there is some evidence that at the date when these manuscripts were written Maya culture was in a transition state; that is to say, conventional symbols were passing into true ideographs[366-1] and possibly into phonetic characters. The lack of any satisfactory key to assist us in deciphering them makes it exceedingly difficult to decide how far this change had progressed. We are therefore left wholly to deductions to be drawn from the facts obtained by laborious comparisons of the various relations in which the characters are found and the uses which appear to be made of them in the manuscript. It will be admitted without question that a large number of these characters are ideographs or conventional symbols, as distinguished from pictures, as, for example, most of those denoting the days, months, and cardinal points. I say most of these, as it is yet possible to learn from some of them the objects they were intended to represent, the characteristic features not being entirely lost, as the symbol for the day Cimi, the "death's head" or skull; that of the day Ymix, "the grain of maize;" that of the month Moan, "the head of the moo or ara," a species of parrot, &c. It is also possible to show from the manuscripts themselves evidences of the changes from conventional pictographs to true or mnemonic symbols. Take, for instance, the bird symbols on Plates 16, 17, and 18 of the Dresden Codex, presented in the preceding marginal figures numbered 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, and 33. If the determination be correct as given, it is apparent that, while one of the birds is indicated by the head as a symbol, the others are denoted by ideographs, or by phonetic characters bearing no resemblance to their forms or peculiar features. That numerous examples of this kind are to be found in these manuscripts will be admitted by all who have carefully studied them.